Could we not get Victor Wembanyama enough attention? I don’t mean that as a joke. I’m being serious. Wasn’t that enough to make this guy one of the best talents ever? Would he not be the best chance ever?
I’m not going there anymore. I’d be happy with high school LeBron James. But what Wembanyama is doing is already making me think about basketball in ways I didn’t think possible, and I thought he was going to be great.
Wembanyama, who is 7 feet 4 inches tall, crosses over into a pull-up jumper, grabs a rebound, and finishes a spin-move-and-one from basically behind the backboard along the baseline on Friday night against the Warriors. He also blocks Klay Thompson’s 3-point attempt, finishes the dunk on the other end, and finally stifles every move Andrew Wiggins tries to make by staying connected to him as he looks for any space b.
It would help if you saw this scene to believe it.
Wemby did all this in 90 seconds 👽 pic.twitter.com/LwKec8Nc4j
— Brett Usher (@UsherNBA) October 21, 2023
In NBA slang, the word “crazy” is used way too often. That is wild. Wembanyama showed off a set of skills and size in less than two minutes that has never been seen before in NBA history.
People older than me say that Ralph Sampson did this when he first came into the league in the early 1980s. If that’s true, then Sampson was a bad person, and it’s a damn shame that injuries took away the ways he could’ve changed the game for us and him.
That said, the NBA was not ready for a seven-footer to do those things back then. It’s now. Wembanyama may be the right player at the right time. Almost every game he plays, at least one play or series like this will make you scratch your head, clean your glasses, and ask yourself, “Did I just see that right?”
Sure, you did. And it was wild.
